Since when is speaking AT the same as speaking FOR?

The post below is from the far-Left "Daily Kos". They do not as yet know what Curry will say. But you must not even speak at some places. Just being in the company of conservatives discredits a person, apparently.  In Communist and Fascist regimes you could be executed for the company you keep, so it is nice to see what company the American Left keeps

Curry is actually a Warmist.  She just doubts that we know how severe the warming will be.  She allows that it could be trivial.  That is enough to get her cast into outer darkness however.  No debate permitted!  Science, data and facts no longer matter, only your politics.

Judith Curry is their biggest threat right now, so the viciousness of their response is childishly predictable. So far, she has stood up really well to their bullying and they really hate that.  If they expect her to go away and whimper in a corner, I’m guessing they’re in for a nasty shock.

Judith Curry, former Chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology was, until now, one of the few skeptics with a veneer of credibility.

But that is slated to change, as she will be featured in a George C. Marshall Institute event at The National Press Club. For those who are unaware, the Marshall Institute is a conservative "think tank" that began lobbying to support Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative. Over time the Institute shifted from Cold War hype to the downplaying of environmental threats, including the dangers of secondhand smoke, CFCs' effect on the ozone, and now climate change.

The Institute's event is titled "State of the Climate Debate" and will focus on the (supposedly) weakening case for human caused climate change as well as the link between extreme weather events and climate change, and the challenges of "deep climate uncertainty" for policymakers.

Perhaps the bigger story, however, is this event may be the last straw for Curry's dwindling credibility in academia. It's one thing to question the consensus or otherwise indirectly assist anti-climate science arguments. But to speak on behalf of a group heavily funded by fossil fuel companies and conservative donors—a group with a well-known 30 year history of distorting science for political aims—well that may just be career suicide. At least, academic career suicide. Unfortunately, if Curry has given up on respectability, this may just be the first of many such events.

SOURCE




Tim Ball comments on the hostility to Judith Curry

It appears to me, reading mostly between the electronic lines, that a turning point for Judith Curry was the reaction of her colleagues to the very legitimate appeal for discourse, debate and openness of the invitation to Steve McIntyre to speak at her university. I got the impression that professor Curry was initially taken aback and reluctant to accept the reaction. Part of this is likely due to the fact you have to work with people, but also because it takes time to adjust to finding yourself on the outside.

It is my experience that unless you have experienced the kind of vitriolic response you get from daring to question the prevailing wisdom, you have no idea how nasty and personal it can be. What is remarkable is the degree of nastiness, even hatred, about a subject as innocuous as weather and climate. For me, this is a measure of the degree to which climate has become purely political. In science, people hope to disagree, yet not be disagreeable.

As Voltaire said, it is never wise to disagree with the people in authority. I would add, that this is especially true when their funding, careers, and groupthink positions are all threatened. It is extremely difficult to have and maintain an open mind, even if you are on the so-called skeptical side. It is very easy to reach a point where you say, if the world wants to be fooled, let it be fooled. I agree that professor Curry has demonstrated the resolve to pursue the truth by listening to all sides, as happened when she first chose to invite Steve McIntyre.

Via email





Fear of skeptics

There is going to be a People's  Cimate March - 11:30 am, Sunday, September 21st in NYC.  We all know what "People's Republics" are  (as in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, led by the charming Kim Jong Un) So the organizers are flaunting their far-Left identity.

That is not the only amusing thing about the march, however.  The organizers have emailed their supporters with a warning to avoid the dreaded skeptics.  It has got to the point where they are afraid of us!  The email reads:

Hello all,

I wanted to share a warning with everyone on these lists, that representatives from climate denier group CFACT will be at the march, and possibly other direct actions, doing "gotcha" video interviews to attempt to make participants look ignorant. Marc Morano will probably attend in person.

My advice to everyone would be to be careful who you talk to - if anyone asks to interview you, try and find out who they're with first. If you do run into CFACT, you might be tempted to try and debate them, but for what it's worth I would advise people not to engage them.

Even if you win the debate in real life, they will edit the video to make it seem otherwise, so it's just not worth it. Watch a few of their existing videos and you'll see what I mean!

Good luck out there!

Phil

The scandal of UK's death-trap wind turbines: A turbine built for 115mph winds felled in 50mph gusts. Dozens more affected by cost-cutting

It was just before midnight on a winter’s night last  year. Outside in the gusting January wind it was freezing, but Bill Jarvis was sitting by the fire with his  wife Annie and a few relatives in their cottage on the North Devon moors.

And that’s when they heard it: a  tremendous ‘crack’, louder than  a thunderclap.

‘We rushed outside wondering what on earth had happened,’ recalls Bill. ‘We thought perhaps a plane had crashed it was such a loud  noise. ‘We couldn’t see flames or anything burning, even though we peered out in the direction it had come from. There was nothing  else though, no more noise or aftershocks.’

Deafeningly loud it might have been, but what the Jarvis family had heard – as they were to discover the following morning –  had taken place at Bradworthy, a mile away. It was the noise of  a 115ft-high wind turbine crashing  to the ground.

‘It’s pretty terrifying stuff,’ says Mr Jarvis. ‘I’m no fan of the things and this has just added to my worries. Just think what could have happened. It sends a shiver down your spine.’

He is not the only one feeling  nervous about the march of the  giant metal windmills across the British landscape.

This week, the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) produced two reports – one into the catastrophic failure of the Bradworthy turbine and another into the collapse of a turbine in the next county, Cornwall, just three nights later.

And its conclusions are not  merely unsettling, but have frightening implications for wind turbines and their safety right across the country.

The turbines in Devon and Cornwall came down when the wind  was blowing at barely 50mph,  despite the fact that they are supposed to withstand blasts of just over 115mph.

And, as the HSE concluded, the causes were manufacturing faults and basic mistakes in the way  they were installed. The errors  have already been replicated elsewhere in the country, as the two reports make clear, and could affect dozens – if not hundreds – more of the giant towers.

It is hardly encouraging to learn that the HSE reports were not published in a normal sense, but were available only on request and in redacted form.

They have come to light now only through Freedom of Information (FoI) requests lodged by a number of concerned residents.

Dr Philip Bratby, from the Campaign to Protect Rural England, believes the risk of collapse will continue to grow as long as the  wind industry is allowed to operate behind a wall of secrecy.

A retired physicist, who formerly worked in nuclear energy, he says: ‘Safety standards in my line of work were paramount. We constantly monitored, tested and maintained equipment but this does not seem the case with turbines.

‘These two failures were catastrophic. The towers came crashing down with great force from a  great height.  ‘It was only down to luck it happened in the night and no people  or animals were injured or killed.

‘The wind industry is very secretive about everything it does.  It won’t publicise any definitive information about accidents so it is impossible to make an independent assessment of the risks.’

Dr Bratby lives at Rackenford, high on the edge of Exmoor, where  there has also been a proliferation  of turbines.

‘I am not convinced that we are learning from the bad experiences and feeding those lessons back  into the education of designers and constructors because the industry is growing so rapidly,’ he says.  ‘The size of these turbines seems to keep on increasing and I believe the dangers will increase accordingly. The bigger the turbine that fails, the bigger the potential for disaster and death.’

Turbine towers are supposedly secured by lowering them on  to a series of foundation rods  that emerge vertically from a concrete foundation.

These are levelled by the adjustment of bottom nuts below a flange at the base and then fixed with another set of nuts above the base.

All the exposed metal, including the rods and the nuts, is then encased in grout which protects it and spreads the stresses from any movement in the turbine.

Yet as these groundbreaking HSE reports show, not only were some of the parts faulty, two different sets of sub-contractors made the same basic – possibly cost-cutting – errors. And the result was that the metal monsters were not secure at all.

In the incident at East Ash Farm, Bradworthy, on January 27, 2013 – the one heard by Mr Jarvis – an E3120 model, made by Canadian-based Endurance, was found to have been installed with the wrong configuration of nuts at its base.

This upset the ‘loadings’, or balance, of the tower. The implication is that it wasn’t level. To compound the problem, the contractors who installed it had failed to use structural-grade grout to seal the rods and bolts from the worst of the weather and had used a ‘cosmetic’ compound instead.

The HSE reports reveal that  the same faulty configuration of  nuts had been to blame at Wattlesborough, near Shrewsbury in Shropshire, the previous year when another E3120 collapsed.

To date, Endurance has erected 300 of the E3120s throughout the United Kingdom.  The UK arm of the company says it has inspected all of them and carried out urgent repairs on 29 of the towers.

A different type of turbine fell at Winsdon Farm, North Petherwin, Cornwall, on January 30. This was a G133, manufactured by Gaia-Wind, originally a Danish firm.

This time there was a fault with the components, resulting in a failure in the foundation rods concreted into its base. But again, it had been badly installed with a lack of grout. As the HSE inspector concluded, there was ‘a lack of resilience to the fatigue loading within the securing arrangement… and poor fatigue strength in the securing components’.

The collapse of another G133 turbine at Otley, near Leeds, in April 2013 occurred in identical circumstances. Again, the securing rods were substandard. Once again, they had not been properly grouted in place.

As Dr Bratby points out, the footings and securings, which are difficult to inspect when encased in concrete and grout, are critical because they are subject to such huge and varying forces.

‘Over time they clearly degrade  to the point of failure,’ he says. ‘We should be asking ourselves whether we are at a tipping point as the  first-generation technology is exposed and compromised.’

Dr Bratby is frustrated at the  lack of risk assessments undertaken when looking at sites.  He says: ‘I accept that the dangers from wind turbines located on farms without public access and remote from public rights of way are probably acceptable.

‘That is not always the case.  They have been located close  to roads and railways, at workplaces, in schools, hospitals and parks without any formal assessment of the dangers. I think that  is unacceptable.’

His views are shared by fellow campaigner Alan Dransfield, from Exeter, who helped to mastermind  the FoI application.

‘These reports took the best part of a year and several thousand pounds to compile, and the HSE decided to investigate because of the extensive media coverage and widespread public concern,’ Mr Dransfield says.  ‘I’m delighted they did because look what they’ve found. Without doubt there is an urgent need for a more proactive stance with regard  to the wind-turbine industry. It clearly can’t police itself.’

Taken together, there are 380  E3120 and GI33 towers. Of these, four are known to have collapsed, while repairs were necessary in  39 others to prevent potential further collapses.

Meanwhile, an as yet undisclosed number have further problems  with the way they are bolted down, according to the HSE, and need repairing as soon as possible.

Revealing as they are, however,  the two new reports deal with only  a small minority of British  turbines: there are 6,500 of differing design and manufacture across  the country, and when it comes to problems with collapse or faulty installation, the public is wholly in the dark.

Figures from Caithness Windfarm Information Forum, a wind-turbine monitoring website, show that structural failure is the third most common major fault, behind blade failure and fire.

It has recorded an average of 149 accidents worldwide every year between 2009 and 2013 but believes this to be the ‘tip of the iceberg’ as  it relies on scanning the internet  for reports of such incidents.

‘The trend is as expected – as more turbines are built, more accidents occur,’ says a spokesman. ‘The numbers will continue upwards  until the HSE helps force significant change.

‘In particular, the public should be protected by declaring a minimum safe distance between new turbine developments and occupied houses and buildings.’

However, Chris Streatfeild, director of health and safety with Renewable UK, the industry trade association, believes that any fears of wind power are unfounded and the risks minimal  and acceptable.

‘Manufacturers, installers and  owners work hard to ensure that they meet extremely stringent health and safety standards,’ he says.  ‘There’s a rigorous process, verified by independent bodies, to ensure strict installation standards and safe siting. That’s why problems are  so rare.’

He adds: ‘When incidents do occur, it’s important to learn from them  and implement any lessons fully and promptly. Any serious incident has to be reported to the HSE and we work closely with them to ensure high standards are maintained.

‘To put this into its proper context, no member of the public has ever been injured by a wind turbine. It’s unfortunate a handful of anti-wind campaigners are choosing to indulge in scaremongering.

‘Climate change is a real and pressing issue. When it comes to generating clean electricity, onshore wind is the most cost-effective way so we should be making the most of it.’

Meanwhile, at North Petherwin,  the fallen wind turbine has now  been resurrected. Indeed, landowner and Liberal Democrat councillor Adam Paynter has installed a second one alongside it. Mr Paynter declined to comment when contacted by The Mail on Sunday.

At Bradworthy, farmers Des  and Vera Ludwell were also staying quiet about their windmill. A  new turbine stands in the position  of its collapsed predecessor, about  50 yards from the road. A second  one is even closer, leaving little  safety margin.

Councillor David Tomlin revealed there are 50 turbines within a six-mile radius of Bradworthy, a quiet market town, and a further 20 have been approved.

‘We are not anti-wind power as such,’ he says. ‘But there is a visual intrusion and residents who live  close to turbines report a constant whooshing noise from blades. Most importantly, can we still be certain they are safe?

‘What happened here and in Cornwall and analysed in detail in these two reports should be a wake- up call. Perhaps we should halt  the erection of further turbines pending an investigation of the industry  as a whole.’

SOURCE




Brussels Anti-Green Purge: New EU Leaders Neuter Green Lobby

Jean-Claude Juncker’s decision to group commissioners into teams serving under a vice-president has been welcomed by some interest groups, and derided by others.

Environmental campaigners are unhappy about the new organisational structure, while industry groups say it will avoid disjointed or conflicting policies and will reduce red tape.

Juncker has grouped energy, climate and environment portfolios together serving under Alenka Bratušek, the vice-president for energy union. Within this subject area, he has merged four existing commissioner posts into two. Energy and climate, which are currently two separate portfolios, have been combined into one post, to be held by Miguel Arias Cañete from Spain. Environment and fisheries, previously two separate posts, have been merged into one, to be held by Karmenu Vella from Malta.

The remaining commissioners on the team will be Ireland’s Phil Hogan as agriculture commissioner, Romania’s Corina Creţu as regional policy commissioner, and Portugal’s Carlos Moedas as research, science and innovation commissioner.

Rumours of the intention to combine the climate and energy portfolios have been sparking alarm among environmentalists for weeks. But the elimination of a dedicated environment portfolio came as a genuine shock to green groups.

Today (11 September) the ‘Green 10’ – an alliance of European environmental NGOs – sent a letter to Juncker saying that his restructuring decisions suggest a “de-facto shutdown of EU environmental policymaking”.

The campaign groups say that placing these commissioners under a vice-president for energy union “could imply that climate action is considered subordinate to energy market considerations”. Only vice-presidents will be able to put policy proposals on to the Commission’s agenda, according to Juncker’s new system. The campaigners say there is a “virtual lack of any reference to environment in the responsibilities of the vice-presidents”.

“The biggest change is the structural blocks put on any new legislative activity,” said Tony Long, director of campaign group WWF. “Every avenue is blocked because it all has to go through a vice-president and then a first vice-president.”

The campaigners say the mandate letter sent by Juncker to Vella indicates that the commissioner’s role will be one of environmental deregulation.

The mandate letter includes orders to consider changing EU nature protection and biodiversity legislation. It asks Vella to “overhaul the existing environmental legislative framework to make it fit for purpose”.

National media reaction to Juncker's allocation of portfolios
While the division of some of the posts came as a surprise, the reaction from media in the member states has been largely positive.

Markus Beyrer, director-general of BusinessEurope, described Juncker’s reorganisation as a “courageous approach for a streamlined structure of the new Commission”.

“This underlines the clear aim to focus on the crucial priorities necessary to make Europe more competitive in order to deliver more growth and more jobs,” he said.

Mark Fodor, executive director of campaign group Central and Eastern Europe Bankwatch, said the letter suggests that Juncker is back-tracking from previous commitments. “By missing out the crucial role of EU funding for addressing the climate challenge, the president-elect is showing complete disregard for the future of our planet,” he said.

More HERE





Global Warming ‘Skeptics’ Hold Political Sway From The UK To India

Skepticism of global warming may be more widespread than it is portrayed in the media, with nearly half of British lawmakers being labelled as climate “skeptics” and India’s prime minister casting doubt on claims of man-made global warming.

A special report by PR Week shows that a vast majority of conservative members of UK Parliament are that mankind is the main driver behind global temperature rises. While a slight majority (51 percent) of members of parliament (MPs) say that global warming “is largely man made” and an established fact, nearly three quarters of conservative MPs disagree.

PR Week reports that 53 percent of conservative MPs agree with the statement that it “has not yet been conclusively proved that climate change is man made.” Another 18 percent of conservative MPs say “man-made climate change is environmentalist propaganda”.

A public poll also taken by PR Week shows that only about one-third of British voters believe global warming claims have been exaggerated. The poll also showed that 80 percent of British voters believes that global warming is happening and 60 percent believe it’s mainly caused by humans.

An Ipsos Mori poll from July shows that the U.S., UK and Australia still have large numbers of people who remain skeptical of global warming, despite the huge media and political blitz from environmentalists and politicians. About a third of Americans remain skeptical of global warming, according to Ipsos Mori. They are joined by about a quarter of Brits and Aussies.

India’s Prime Minister Says Global Warming ‘Has Not Occurred’

On the other side of the globe, India’s newly elected Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently made some comments that have the media outing him as a global warming skeptic.

Answering questions about global warming on Teachers’ Day, Modi told people that “[c]limate change has not occurred,” adding that “[p]eople have changed.” Modi then gave an example of how elderly Indians are complaining of harsher winters every year.

“It’s just people losing tolerance for cold as they age,” Modi said, according to a report by the Business Standard. “Modi said the real problem is people have lost old values, picked up bad habits and therefore harmed environment. He said people are acting against nature and that has upset the balance. We must love nature again, he concluded.”

Modi’s comments baffled Indian political pundits. How could the man who wrote a book on responding to global warming in 2011 and made speeches about tackling the issue while eradicating poverty say global warming hasn’t occurred?

“Well, the book is just as befuddling,” writes Indian columnist Netin Sethi for the Business Standard. “It’s an illustrated thick pamphlet of what all the government of Gujarat has done to combat and adapt to climate change. But, it mixes up concepts just as the PM mixed up civic duty of citizens, scientific facts and metaphors in his speech on Teacher’s Day.”

“Narendra Modi, in his earlier scripted speeches as prime minister, however, sounded anything but a climate skeptic,” Sethi writes, adding that Modi has prioritized reducing poverty over environmental goals.

“His team of negotiators are acting in a consistent manner with the laid down brief on international climate change policies,” writes Sethi. “One, poverty eradication is a national priority. Two, there are climate co-benefits to be derived from taking actions that also provide energy security. Three, India is extremely vulnerable to climate change. Four, the route to an ambitious global agreement can be built only on a substratum of equity among nations.”

But since Modi has become prime minister, he has made efforts to jump start India’s coal sector and target environmental groups with an anti-development agenda. The UK Guardian reports that Modi “has dismantled a number of environmental protections, clearing the way for new coal mines and other industrial projects,” and “blocked funds to Greenpeace and other environmental groups.”

Modi will also not be attending the upcoming United Nations climate summit this month, joining China’s leader and others in opting not to attend the conference.

The conference will feature a major march by environmental groups and more pleas from the U.N. for countries to agree on an international, binding climate treaty. While any real progress is doubtful this year, countries are gearing up for a major climate summit in 2015 that is supposed to craft an agreement to replace the defunct Kyoto Protocol.

SOURCE





BOOK REVIEW:  "CLIMATE FOR THE LAYMAN"

New ebook exposes so-called “greenhouse gases” as not the cause of global warming. Author, Anthony Bright-Paul demonstrates how science and the observable facts prove precisely the opposite - such gases encourage our planet to cool



Guided by years of private correspondence gleaned from eminent scientists not invested in the cause of human-caused climate change, Bright-Paul demonstrates for lay readers that such “greenhouse gases” scatter, deflect and reflect the incoming solar radiation. “This is not only obvious to scientists but also to any normal sentient observant being,” insists the author.

The book ‘Climate for the Layman’ thereby builds a seemingly irrefutable case that the Sun warms the Earth and Oceans, and they in turn warm the atmosphere from the bottom upwards.

The book argues that far from cutting down on Carbon Dioxide (CO2) emissions, this gas, which every human being and member of the animal kingdom exhales night and day, could (and should) naturally increase from the current supposedly “dangerous” 350 parts per million (ppm) to 1,000 ppm in order to make Earth a truly green planet.

A veritable thumb in the eye to alarmist propaganda, this books demonstrates that plants love Carbon Dioxide and produce Oxygen as a by-product; an inescapable and well-known Biological fact.

As Bright-Paul and other informed skeptics (Natural News) are telling us:

“Practically everything you have been told by the mainstream scientific community and the media about the alleged detriments of greenhouse gases, and particularly carbon dioxide, appears to be false, according to new data compiled by NASA's Langley Research Center. As it turns out, all those atmospheric greenhouse gases that Al Gore and all the other global warming hoaxers have long claimed are overheating and destroying our planet are actually cooling it, based on the latest evidence.”

This has long been the assessment of independent climate analyst, Hans Schreuder and his associates. Schreuder, a key figure in Principia Scientific International (PSI) has his essay, Greenhouse Gases cool the atmosphere made a central feature in this book.

Bright-Paul espouses a core theme of Schreuder and PSI scientists - that the atmosphere is warmed from the bottom upwards and the principal heat exchange mechanism is conduction and convection (not radiation, as per current climate science orthodoxy). This heat exchange is taking place simultaneously over the whole surface of the Planet. It warms and cools the atmosphere - everywhere and all at once.

As respected Canadian Geophysicist, Norm Kalmanovitch, explains:

“Virtually all the heat uptake of the atmosphere is from conduction and latent heat transfer from water vapour condensing into clouds with the majority of this coming from latent heat transfer. By comparison gases like water vapour with a permanent dipole moment or gases like CO2 which can have a dipole moment induced at wavelengths resonant with particular internal molecular vibrations have the capability of absorbing and re-emitting photons in random directions but since this process only redirects energy without permanent absorption there is no net transfer of energy to these molecules and therefore no net heat uptake.”

(Kalmanovitvch, by Email, December 8, 2013)

'Climate for the Layman' is written and compiled from many sources, essays and articles that had a particular bearing on since he first viewed ‘The Great Global Warming Swindle’ the ground-breaking documentary by film producer, Martin Durkin on UK television's Channel 4 in 2007. As a non-scientist the author sought out explanations, from the film's featured scientists, Professor Tim Ball and Professor Bob Carter, as well as from the Rev Philip Foster and Hans Schreuder.

Bright-Paul's own essays have evoked invaluable feedback directly by emails from scientists from all over the world. As such, this books is a product of such unique insight and a record of the author's own voyage of discovery into one of the most hotly contested disputes in modern science.

Airing their considered views to the author via email and graciously giving their permission to share such insights in this book, what 'Climate for the Layman' offers readers is a series of essays and articles all in date order; thus reflecting one man's growing understanding of the use (and abuse) scientific data. The author's own innate skepticism is manifest, which eventually leads him to question the very cornerstone of climate alarmist science – the so-called “greenhouse gas effect.”

“It is an absolute scandal that young people have been persuaded by endless repetition that Carbon Dioxide is a pollutant and not an important part of the life cycle,” says Bright-Paul.

What we see is that for many the idea of man made ‘climatechange’ has too long been unquestioned Holy Writ; totally bypassing the fact that despite a few decades of moderate warming earth's Biosphere has been evolving for millions of years with long, barren Ice Ages and wonderfully fecund and all-too-short Warm Periods.

Lamenting the cherry-picking of data and wilfully alarmist calls to scale back human industrial progress to “stop” climate change the author concludes:

“…. global warming is both vile and repugnant when this is forced on impressionable minds of children through indoctrination by our schools still teaching fraudulent IPCC dogma about catastrophic anthropogenic global warming using Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” as the only reference."

That the only reasonable conclusion about this doctrine of man-made Global is both ‘vile and repugnant’ is echoed in the piece ‘The Trouble with Climate Change’ by Lord Lawson, added with Lawson's permission. As a former British Chancellor of the Exchequer it is natural that Lawson should dwell on the economic miseries produced by this false doctrine – especially as such “remedies” to climate change are gravely felt in the Third World."

The aim of the book is fully expressed in the title – it is and is meant to be Climate for the Layman in language that a layman of reasonable intelligence can understand. It is currently available as an eBook, in colour and obtained either through Amazon/Kindle or direct from Authors Online.

Amazon/Kindle version or: Direct from Authors Online

SOURCE

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